"The Messi of the AI world" gets another bullish call! Palantir (PLTR.US) long-term bull reiterates trillion-dollar valuation logic, but "The Big Short" and retail investors disagree.

Palantir (PLTR.US) long-term bull Dan Ives has once again thrust this AI data analytics company into the spotlight. He stated that as enterprise-level AI adoption accelerates, Palantir's market capitalization could eventually reach $1 trillionequivalent to twice its current valuation of $414.6 billion. It is reported that Ives made this prediction at the ongoing Future Proof conference in Huntington Beach, California; the prediction currently comes from a paraphrase rather than an official release by the company or Ives himself. This statement is the latest in a series of bullish remarks by Ives. He has repeatedly listed Palantir as one of his top picks for participating in the AI buildout wave. "Messi of AI": Ives' call list this year Earlier this week, Ives appeared on the Global Money Talk podcast and grouped Palantir, NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA.US), and Microsoft Corporation (MSFT.US) together as the "backbone of the AI revolution," and called Palantir the "Messi of AI," citing its execution and its ability to translate AI technology into enterprise-level applications. According to the record of that podcast episode, Ives also gave his assessment of the scale of the AI buildout: every $1 spent on NVIDIA Corporation chips will generate a "10x multiplier" in other parts of the tech sector; he had just returned from inspecting rural data centers in Nebraska, saying there are as many as 1,500 data centers under construction across the United States, which are the "heart and lungs" of this revolution; and he said this is the first time in 30 years that the United States has led China in technology development. He explicitly rebutted the AI bubble theory, arguing that the industry is in the third year of an "8-to-10-year buildout cycle""the AI party started at 9:30, it's now about 11:30, and this party is going to run until 4 a.m." Earlier, on August 27, he called Palantir the "gold standard" for AI use cases and said his firm's research showed Palantir could eventually participate in 70% to 80% of AI use cases; he expects the company to become a trillion-dollar market-cap company within the next two to three years. He specifically named the U.S. commercial business as the key DRIVE, arguing that this business could maintain 80% to 100% growth and could scale from roughly $250 million to $500 million at the time to $1 billion within the next 12 months; he also said the company's free cash flow could rise from about $2 billion to $3 billion to $7 billion to $8 billion in the coming years, thereby supporting the current valuation. It should be noted that Ives' role changed this year: according to reports, he left Wedbush on July 1 after eight years there and is currently a partner and senior managing director at Yorkville Ives. There is another detail worth noting: a 247wallst report on August 27 pointed out that all six AI stocks Ives named in an interview that day had already appeared in the holdings list of the ETF named after him (IVES), and that day's program did not include the relevant disclosure. The stock price is waiting for a catalyst The backdrop to this round of bullish calls is that Palantir's stock price is lacking a new story. Since the jump following its earnings report early last month, the stock has been fluctuating within a narrow range, with investors waiting for a catalyst that can push the shares toward a new breakout. The earnings report itself did provide ample fuel for the AI growth narrative. Second-quarter revenue surged 93% to $1.94 billion, with U.S. commercial revenue soaring 149%; the company also raised its full-year 2026 revenue guidance to $8.15 billion to $8.16 billion, implying 82% growth. Institutions believe that the company's proposed concept of "Sovereign AI"enterprises autonomously orchestrating and fine-tuning large models within their own secure environments, with full control over data and model weightscombined with the customized model of AIP plus forward-deployed engineers (FDE), constitutes a barrier different from general SaaS. In terms of price and valuation, as of Tuesday's close, Palantir was at $173.31, with a market capitalization of about $416.5 billion, and a 52-week range of $106.37 to $207.52. The stock has fallen nearly 3% year to date, after several consecutive years of sharp gainsup 340% in 2024 and up 135% in 2025. The valuation remains at an extremely high level: its price-to-earnings ratio (TTM) is about 148x, while the stock's five-year median is 270x; its price-to-sales ratio is about 45x, and its PEG is about 3.42x. UBS Group AG echoes: relative to AI software peers, it is "cheap" Wall Street is also emphasizing the continuity of demand. On Tuesday, UBS Group AG reiterated its "Buy" rating on Palantir and raised its target price from $220 to $250. The call was made by UBS Group AG analyst Karl Keirstead, triggered by his attendance last week at Palantir's AIPCon customer and executive event. He wrote in the report: "Our viewthat Palantir is the best AI enabler in the market (making frontier models useful in large enterprises)was, if anything, reinforced after conversations with executives and customers, and demand momentum looks strong." His key argument is valuation: Palantir currently trades at about 51x estimated 2027 free cash flow (previously about 46x), which is not expensive relative to peers such as Snowflake (SNOW.US) and CrowdStrike (CRWD.US), while growing more than 90%; he expects the company's compound growth rate over the next three years to reach 63%, so a valuation of 53x estimated 2028 free cash flow is a "reasonable premium." Keirstead also pointed out two investor concerns weighing on the valuationnear-term growth may be nearing a peak, and foundation model vendors may directly move into the data software layerand rebutted both: "Palantir is a leader in all three key growth areas of AI, data, and modern defense technology, and deserves a significant premium, making it a cheap stock on a relative basis." He also mentioned a possible deeper partnership with NVIDIA Corporation as another catalyst, but at the same time said bluntly that Palantir's flagship "Sovereign AI narrative is slightly self-serving," and that customer resistance to frontier model vendors is not as strong as the company claims. Divergence: Wall Street analysts are mostly bullish, while "The Big Short" and retail investors are bearish According to Koyfin statistics, among 32 analysts covering Palantir, 21 give a "Buy" or higher rating, 9 say "Hold," and 2 say "Sell" or lower; their average target price is $196.84. Another set of figures from LSEG: as of Tuesday, 23 of 33 analysts gave a buy or strong buy. On the retail side, sentiment is almost the opposite of the sell side. On the Stockwits platform, Palantir's retail sentiment remains "bearish," unchanged over the past week. One trader wrote: "Palantir is interesting. Big money is desperately trying to hold it up, but it's still falling. A pullback is forming, it's only a matter of time." Institutional fund movements are also cautious. According to GuruFocus, insider selling at Palantir over the past three months totaled about $124 million; another set of statistics on a net basis shows that in the 90 days ending September 9, insiders net sold about $34.5 million, with no meaningful insider buying during that period. The representative of the bear camp is well-known investor Michael Burry: he believes the market values Palantir as a high-growth software company, but its business is closer in nature to consulting, and he questions the company's heavy use of stock-based compensation, the rise in U.S. federal net operating loss (NOL) from $5.5 billion in 2025 to $9 billion, and CEO private jet spending rising from $7.7 million in 2024 to $17.2 million in 2025. He wrote: "For Palantir, in many ways, the stock price itself is the business model." He judges that its market capitalization could eventually fall below $100 billion, or even that revenue could shrink over time and the company could be acquired at a much lower valuation. On one side is the "1 trillion dollars" endgame narrative, and on the other is a modest year-to-date decline in the stock price and bearish retail sentimentPalantir's current divergence is not about whether the growth is real, but about how much margin for error a 148x price-to-earnings ratio has actually priced in for this growth curve.